A 67-year-old Long Island father spent five days in the hospital and waited five years for a diagnosis after contracting a rare tick-borne virus that has no treatment, no vaccine, and no commercial test.
Michael Larkin was doing yard work at his home in Suffolk County in 2021 when two lone star ticks bit him. He removed them quickly. Days later, a fever and a crushing headache knocked him flat. He went to a local clinic, told the staff about the bites, and they tested him for Lyme disease. The test came back negative. Nobody mentioned Bourbon virus, a pathogen so rare that health authorities believe it strikes roughly one American per year.
Larkin's condition kept deteriorating. Rash, night sweats, and a headache he described as excruciating followed. Doctors prescribed antibiotics for Lyme disease anyway, but nothing worked. Larkin told CBS News:
"Three or four hours later, I would hit rock bottom and can't get off the couch. I demanded my wife take me to the hospital because that's how bad it was. I couldn't stand it anymore."
He spent five days hospitalized. When he was released, he still had no confirmed diagnosis. It would take until April 2026, roughly five years after the tick bites, before researchers at Stony Brook University's Tick-borne Disease Clinic finally identified what had made him so sick: Bourbon virus, the first confirmed case in New York State.
Dr. Luis Marcos, director of the Tick-borne Disease Clinic at Stony Brook University, led a study that enrolled 107 patients who showed up between 2019 and 2024 with fevers and symptoms consistent with tick-borne illness. Researchers drew blood from each patient and sent samples to the New York State Department of Health for analysis. Larkin's blood was checked every three months.
The breakthrough came when his antibody levels spiked. As the Daily Mail reported, Dr. Marcos confirmed that over a single month, Larkin's antibody titers increased eight-fold, the clearest marker researchers had.
"This one case certainly was the Bourbon virus, and over a one-month period antibody titers increased eight-fold," Dr. Marcos said.
The findings were published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The study's authors called for "expanded viral surveillance, clinical testing and assay development to improve clinical decision-making and inform tick-borne disease epidemiology and vector management."
That language is clinical. The reality behind it is blunt: no commercial diagnostic test for Bourbon virus exists anywhere in the country. Samples in New York must be routed through the state health department. Most physicians have never encountered a case and would not think to order the test even if they could.
Bourbon virus was first identified in 2014 in Bourbon County, Kansas, where health authorities believe a patient died from the infection. A second fatality is believed to have occurred in 2026. Before Larkin's case, every known instance had been detected in the Midwest, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Only a handful of cases have ever been formally identified.
The New York Post noted that two of the very few confirmed Bourbon virus cases ended in death, a fatality rate that, even on a tiny sample, should focus attention on the diagnostic gap. There is no vaccine to prevent infection, no targeted treatment once a patient is infected, and no quick way for an emergency room physician to confirm what a sick patient is carrying.
Dr. Marcos warned that the problem is almost certainly larger than the case count suggests. Lone star ticks, the species that carries Bourbon virus, are abundant across New York and the broader Northeast. Dense human populations live in close proximity to tick habitat. And because Bourbon virus symptoms mimic other tick-borne infections, misdiagnosis is the path of least resistance.
"There are a lot of lone star ticks in New York and in the Northeast. We have dense populations, and when someone is infected with Bourbon virus symptoms they are similar to other tick-borne infections," Dr. Marcos said.
His conclusion was direct: "For these reasons, the Bourbon virus is likely more prevalent than we think in our region and other cases are likely not being diagnosed."
What stands out in Larkin's case is the gap between the severity of the disease and the tools available to fight it. A virus that has killed patients and hospitalized a healthy 67-year-old for five days still lacks a commercial diagnostic test more than a decade after it was first identified. Physicians cannot order a standard lab panel. They must know enough to suspect Bourbon virus, collect the right samples, and route them to a state health department, a process that, in Larkin's case, took years to produce a result.
Fox News reported that researchers warn many cases are going undiagnosed due to the lack of testing and limited physician awareness. Dr. Marcos framed the stakes plainly: "Without identifying the cause of an infection, the chances of developing accurate diagnostic tests or effective treatments are minimal. That is why it is so important to first understand the true impact of the virus in high-risk areas."
Serious illnesses that lack treatments or cures remain a persistent concern for American families. The challenge of confronting a diagnosis with limited medical options, as seen in Carly Simon's recent Parkinson's diagnosis, resonates with anyone who has watched a loved one face a condition that medicine cannot yet solve.
Larkin survived. He now treats his outdoor clothing with permethrin, an insect-repellent chemical, before stepping into his yard. It is a practical, low-tech precaution, the kind an individual adopts when institutions have not caught up.
The timeline tells the story more clearly than any press release. In 2014, Bourbon virus killed its first known patient. Eleven years later, the country still has no commercial test, no vaccine, and no treatment. A man on Long Island can be bitten by a tick, fall desperately ill, spend five days in a hospital, and walk out without anyone being able to tell him what happened, then wait half a decade for a research team to confirm the answer.
Dr. Marcos and his co-authors at Stony Brook did the work that identified Larkin's case. They enrolled patients, collected samples, tracked antibodies over months, and published their findings. That effort deserves recognition. But it also raises an uncomfortable question: if a university clinic on Long Island had not run this particular study, would Larkin's case ever have been diagnosed at all?
The answer, based on everything Dr. Marcos has said publicly, is almost certainly no. And if his assessment is correct, that Bourbon virus is "likely more prevalent than we think", then other patients in the Northeast are walking around right now with the same infection and no idea what hit them.
When a disease can kill and the government has spent a decade without producing a basic diagnostic test, the system has not failed quietly. It has failed in the open, one undiagnosed patient at a time.
